Weekend Mishaps

I've taken a little bit ill, and that can make my brain not work so well. I noted that to myself, "self, be extra careful, your brain is not working top notch right now, you are susceptible to making mistakes." I only partly listened though.

It was a beautiful Saturday and I couldn't resist playing outside despite not feeling well. I worked on the luvwagen, fixing the parking brake even further than it was fixed before and played with the ignition timing a little bit. I poked around the yard. Neighbor elizabeth, a talented jewelry artist, gave me some tasty meatloaf that was a good lunch. A free-cycler had goat poo to give away, and I was interested in getting some of that good poo. That meant many opportunities for dangerous mistakes. Getting the little trailer ready to travel public roads, hooking it to the car, driving it on public roads, loading it, driving it back home when it is heavy, getting it into the driveway and then the yard near the garden. I'm sure there are other opportunities for disaster in there. Almost all of that went fine. The goat man was really nice and helped me load up the trailer. They have 85 goats in a dairy operation. The milk goes to cheese makers. I could have stayed there and learned about their goat operation all day, but didn't want to take up any more of his time. I made it all the way home safely. Decided not to put the trailer in the yard right then because I was tired.



I unhooked the trailer, now heavily laden with poo. Decided to air up the tires on the trailer since they were a little low. Right, I decide to do this *after* I drive the trailer full of poo across West Asheville. The little air compressor cord was not quite long enough so I went to roll the car back a foot or two. Foot on brake, release parking brake, rolling back... press brake to stop... nothing happens... bang! Foot not on brake. Foot on clutch. I wasn't really all the way in the car, just had my right foot in, so that's how I confused the pedals. It felt like quite a whack and I was worried about having messed up the car. Due to the wonders of the modern automobile with its plastic bumpers, just a scratch or two.

Nell and I had a quiet evening, both of us being sickly and watching NCAA basketball. Sunday was also a beautiful day and I again couldn't resist going out to play. I decided to put the trailer in the yard by the garden. I still had some of last year's manure in a small pile. It is so nicely decomposed and full of worms. I scooped it over in a pile. I found quite a few grubs in there, which is not a good thing in the garden. I chopped up a few, then started saving them. I put them on the sidewalk by the bird feeder. They were gone in about 10 minutes.

Next I set about hooking the trailer back up to the car and moving it to the yard. I angled a little off and the trailer went down a steep transitional area between the driveway and yard. The car bottomed out and was sitting on the cusp of that transition. Unhooked the trailer. Car no go, wheel spinny. I've been here before, or someplace like here. There was a famous incident when I got my parts van stuck in a tree. It actually was just on the grass in the yard, and it had bad tires and no traction. I kept inching forward to try to go backward and eventually ended up with the nose against a tree. In this situation I get another vehicle to use as an anchor and use a come-a-long to pull the stuck vehicle free. So I put the luvwagen in position and got my come-a-longs and chain collection. Due to the wonders of the modern automobile with its plastic bumpers, there is nothing to attach the chain to on the front of the car. There is a provision for this necessity though. You pop out a little cover on the bumper and there is a threaded hole into which you thread an eye. I got the special eye out of the trunk but couldn't get it to thread in. It has never been used before, so I thought the hole was all gunked up with undercoating and dead bugs. Did some cleaning and finally looked at the eye and saw that it had left hand threads. OK. That's odd. It's probably so people can't thread some cheap ass WalMart eye in there and get hurt. That conundrum solved I went to snatching the car out of its mire. The tension on the come-a-long seemed like quite a lot. I thought that I better be careful since I was sick and prone to mistakes. Checked and re-checked things frequently and thought about the modes of failure. I put blocks under the car wheels and moved them forward every few inches of pulling so that if something broke, the car would not lurch. I tried to stay out of the line of whippage that the cable might take, though that is hard to predict. I thought I had the car pretty far up onto the driveway so I decided to try driving it forward a bit. Nope, still spinny wheels. I wanted to re-extend the cable on the come-a-long, so I put the car in gear and set the parking brake. I loosened the cable and pulled it out and started pulling again. It got really tight and then the luvwagen started dragging its tires across the driveway at an angle. Oops, forgot the car was still in gear and parking brake on. That resolved, it pulled the rest of the way onto the driveway pretty easily.

All of that made me tired and so I came in to relax and write this instead of doing my taxes.

Righteous Epic Wave Ride

What a perfect day for playing in the Pacific Ocean. It was unusually hot, about 90 degrees. With brilliant sunshine and almost complete absence of the usual chilly seabreeze. I don't remember the wind ever being that calm in the afternoon here. Brother Larry and I got in the water which I think was in the mid 60's of Fahrenheit temperature. Once in it, the water didn't feel cold at all.

I've always loved being in those big blue-green Pacific Ocean waves. Being lifted up off the sand by them as a swell passes by. Watching the distant horizon disappear and then return. In recent years the swirling salty ocean has always felt like it cleansed me of the sadness of seeing mom's decline, and let me just enjoy the time with her. As we began to wade out to the breaking waves, we were constantly being pushed toward Seattle by a strong current. So much that I wanted to get out on the shore and walk back to where we had parked our towels and stuff. Each time we would ride a wave in, we waded back out toward Mexico to counteract this drifting. Wading against this current and back out against the incoming waves was difficult. It reminded me of seeing Mom trying to complete simple movements like combing her hair or taking a few steps. The waves and powerful currents slowing her down and constantly buffeting her are a disease in her nervous system.

We rode the waves on boogie boards. It's like a little surfboard that you sort of lay on with your legs hanging off the back. You can raise up on your elbows for a different view, and you can steer by leaning left or right. That's about the extent of my expertise. I see boogie boarders who are far advanced and ride along the face of the wave like on a real surfboard. On this day I saw a couple of them manage to ride under the curl of the breaking wave and pop out on the face of the wave like you see surfers do in movies. I like to get as far out as I can where the waves are breaking but I can still touch the bottom. As a wave comes in and starts to fall over its own feet, the water in front of it rushes back and it gets suddenly much shallower. This is when I like to crouch down and then spring forward to ride on the white froth in front of the wave.

After a while, Larry decided to take a nap on the sand. I continued riding and increased my focus on the moment. I felt a part of that beautiful rhythmic ocean and waves and sun and air and the sounds of the water and feeling my legs push me through it and feeling it push my legs. I didn't have my glasses on, so the visual experience was impressionistic. The close-up view was sharp. There were these sparkly sand particles swirling in the water, glinting in the sunlight. They gave away the secret movements of the water. There was all manner of white foam on top of the water, appearing and disappearing and moving in lines and streaks and blobs. At one point I stood there looking down at a pattern of lines of foam moving toward me and out to sea. Faster and faster as the water moving past my feet accelerated and dug my feet into the sand. It was my whole field of view and the sensation of movement made me want to fall down.

Sometimes the wave ride takes me to the knee deep water and I just walk back out to catch another. On one of the rides I enjoy looking at the frothy breaking wave right next to me. The froth and I are cruising along at the same speed. It's a perspective I've never had before. I'm one with the boiling froth. I caught a series of long rides that went right up to the shore. The boogie board eventually grinds to a stop on the sand when the water is a few inches deep. I roll off in the sandy water and laugh. I'm smiling and laughing and happy in a childhood moment.

Solana Beach Sunset

After the sunset with surfers at Solana Beach was Panang Curried Duck at Spice and Rice Thai Kitchen in La Jolla, one of my favorite restaurants in the world.

GIS Memories Nominated!

Hey, turns out this here famous GIS Memories blog has been nominated to receive an honor at the Blog Asheville Extravablogiversapaloozathon! Wow. I am honored to be nominated in the category, "least likely to care about traffic" or something like that. It's true. I don't care about traffic. In fact, when I first read that, I thought it was talking about automobile traffic in Asheville. I actually don't care about that, but I think it refers to my not caring about the number of people who look at this blog.

I have noticed that the search engine "google" does seem to like my blog for some reason. I once wrote a post about an issue I was having with the GIS software from ESRI. When I went back to searching about the issue, my post was coming out above the entries from the ESRI company itself. Weird.

In response to this honorific nomination, I did a little digging in the stats about what search terms are popular among those landing at this blog from all search engines. Hey Shari, you're at the top of the list. Now you know why your photography is getting so much attention lately! (jk) The Cheerleaders are very popular, and many people are apparently looking to prune their overgrown rose bushes and use their electric chicken buckets. My statistics system is not that sophisticated since I really don't care about traffic. I'm not even sure what time period this covers.

Anyway, after you study the list below, check out all the other great nominated blogs here. If you believe I deserve to win this honor, you can go here and vote for me and the other deserving nominations. (Before Friday September 26, 2008.)

4.93% shari pastore
4.23% authalic sphere
3.52% gism blogspot
2.82% pruning an overgrown rose bush
2.82% geometric network
2.82% expense chart
2.11% how to prune an overgrown rose bush
2.11% gpsvisualizer or gps visualizer
2.11% vw vanagon water pump diagram
1.41% virginia creeper trail elevation profile
1.41% its such a pretty day cause i spent i with you
1.41% january
1.41% nc cheer photos
1.41% cheer photo post
1.41% diesel fuel chart
1.41% blogspot gism
1.41% wearever electric chicken bucket
1.41% stupid mommy asheville blog
1.41% diesel fuel charts
1.41% cheerleader photography
1.41% twin falls cheerleader photographs 2008
1.41% pete zah
1.41% gis class august
1.41% edward west asheville
1.41% the kat box asheville
0.70% prune overgrown rose bush
0.70% emories
0.70% french broad river goldsworthy
0.70% wear ever chicken bucket
0.70% picture of a child like cheerleader
0.70% pressure-fryer chicken bucket
0.70% wear-ever manuals
0.70% gis resumes
0.70% the puffs
0.70% young lovers painting
0.70% eratosthenes sphere
0.70% pressure fryer chicken bucket
0.70% g.i.s.m blogspot
0.70% resumes gis
0.70% g.i.s.m blog
0.70% greatest shot of a cheerleader
0.70% county
0.70% nc map project
0.70% cheerleading photo frames
0.70% cheerleader photo links
0.70% ever wear chicken bucket
0.70% cheerleader picture captures
0.70% great cheerleader photography
0.70% authalic
0.70% wearever chicken fryer manual archived
0.70% girls cheer photos
0.70% air conditioner update
0.70% contributions of eratosthenes
0.70% the arabic gism
0.70% gism concrete
0.70% really
0.70% wearever electric chicken bucket pdf
0.70% wassercooling
0.70% fuel expense
0.70% moon claycombe
0.70% wearever chicken bucket
0.70% hello kitty giss
0.70% sanitary sewer geometric network
0.70% car accident rt 1 kurt
0.70% g.i.s.m blogspot.com
0.70% birthday
0.70% sweetashvegas
0.70% fuel expense fuel expense
0.70% black cheer photography
0.70% overgrown rose bush pruning
0.70% wearever chicken bucket pdf
0.70% golfer kills hawk
0.70% twin falls state park campground
0.70% cartographing
0.70% west asheville
0.70% gism filings
0.70% august
0.70% december
0.70% diesel expense
0.70% electric chicken bucket
0.70% spinning tires a symptom
0.70% wearever pressure fryer
0.70% old arial veiws of colonial beach
0.70% class
0.70% twin falls state bike trail
0.70% colonial beach gis
0.70% puffs
0.70% blogger
0.70% rapid city gis job
0.70% gis class
0.70% kurt vanagan
0.70% tuesday
0.70% wearever electric chicken bucket manual
0.70% vanagon cooling chart
0.70% network
0.70% diesel atom chart

John A. Henderson

Yesterday at church we had a memorial for one of our active members, John Henderson. I knew him mostly from church and his excellent presentations there. Here's his obituary with a summary of an impressive life of healing and helping. John wrote several interesting books which he discussed at our meetings.

At his memorial we read quotes from his books, and I kept this one which I especially liked, "We may not like the fact that random and accidental events determine our lives but that does not alter the reality of it. As we observe the unpredictability of life, we should realize that an intelligent, all-powerful, divine being does not control it."

You might gather correctly that our church is different from many others. John helped to make our group special and he will be missed.

River Rise

Our local river was recently very low. I think it was the lowest in 112 years of record keeping. Check out the chart. It was down to about 200 cubic feet per second (cfs). The triangles show the average is a bit over 1000 cfs. It was so clear and low you could see all the rocks and fish and turtles and tires and shopping carts in the river. I developed a fantasy to walk across the river since it was so low. I waited too long though and the remnants of Hurricane Fay came through and brought a lot of rain. In about 36 hours, the flow went from less than 200 to over 8000 cfs. I should have walked when I had the chance.

Happy Birthday, Dad.